Unique Adventures: A Memoir

By Harry Gage Carpenter

Harry Gage Carpenter looks back at almost ninety years of life in this memoir that celebrates freedom, love, and hard work.

His life would change forever in 1947 when he met Doodie Kirkpatrick of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, while they were both working at Silver Bay, New York, on beautiful Lake George. He was crushed when she rejected him to date someone else, but theyd meet again a few years later, and this time theyd stay togetherfor more than sixty years.

Shortly after getting married to Doodie, the US Army sent him to fight in the Korean War. When he returned home, he eventually began working for his wifes father, the founder of W. S. Kirkpatrick & Co.

Even though he was only twenty-five years old and had zero experience in aviation, the future of the company, which sold spare aircraft parts to foreign airlines, depended on him. For the next thirty years, hed travel the globe and grew the business.

Join Carpenter as he looks back at the high points of a long, marvelous life in Unique Adventures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781532002045

Harry Gage Carpenter

Harry Gage Carpenter is an army veteran of the Korean War who went on to build a small family business. After retiring, he cofounded the American Revolution and Civil War Round Tables in northern New Jersey and the presidency of the Washington Association in Morristown, New Jersey.

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Copyright © 2016 Harry Gage Carpenter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-0205-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0203-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0204-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016913858

iUniverse rev. date: 10/13/2016

Contents

Foreword

The Four Sides Of My Family History

The Early Years: Growing Up In Scarborough And Colgate University

Doodie

The United States Army And Korea: 1952 And 1953

My Career At W. S. Kirkpatrick & Company, Intl.

Expanding And Building The Company

Special Countries And Large Orders

Design And Construction Of Our New Building

Tia Electric Company In Princeton, New Jersey

Winner Of The Pretigious E Award: The Passing Of W. S. Kirkpatrick And The Arrival Of Homi Gazdar

Selling The Company

Saudi Arabia And The New Jeddah Airport

Retirement From Kirkpatrick: Nantucket And Life Thereafter

Postscript

FOREWORD

My life began on February 27, 1929. I was born in Chicago and then taken back home to Moorhead, Minnesota, across the Red River from Fargo, North Dakota. In those days our family moved between those two locations, as my terrific father struggled with problems of his father’s suicide, while developing his investment business—more on that later. In 1934, Dad received a job offer from the E. W. Axe & Co. of New York City and Tarrytown, New York. He accepted, and early in 1935, my parents, my sister Phila, and I made the then long journey eastward, settling in Scarborough, New York—a small section of Briarcliff Manor right on the Hudson River. My life’s story starts at this point in time.

This book is written primarily for my two wonderful, devoted children and my four granddaughters so they will learn of the history of our family. My story is nothing special—hundreds of thousands of Americans have similar tales in our great country, and all are unique in their own way. As I have now reached my eighty-seventh birthday, I realize I had better not delay this book any longer.

To begin, I will cover the four segments of our family—two of which are most interesting—and then continue on to my own journey from prep school to college, then the US Army and the Korean War. Then on to my business, which took me to more than sixty countries. Finally, the most important part of my story is the incredible good fortune I had to marry Doodie—the love of my life for more than sixty-two years.

First of all, I must review my current family, for whom I wrote this book. Cary and Kirk (named for his grandfather William Stewart Kirkpatrick) are so loving and caring of their dad—not a day goes by without my chatting with both, and I see each of them weekly. They are both in their early fifties, happily married, and successful, and they have two daughters, ages twenty-one and twenty-five. They are a joy to all of us! Cary spent almost thirty-five years working as manager of the Eagle’s Nest, a marvelous gift shop her mom cofounded. Kirk has spent his career in the lumber and building supply business and is currently a branch manager for a thriving company in Pennsylvania. My granddaughters are either in college or in good jobs, having completed their scholastic days.

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THE FOUR SIDES OF MY FAMILY HISTORY

THE CARPENTERS

V ery little is known of this vital component of our family. Our ancestors left England in the 1700s for the New World, primarily because of religious persecution, and settled in upstate New York in a small community near Syracuse. After several generations, there were four children, of which little is known except for James Duguid, who was known as Frank.